![London to Prague [via Berlin] on the Imperial Cities & Danube Cruise tour](https://i0.wp.com/iciel.uk/imagesROTR/19-06-HUR1906s/Post1/19-06-01-feature.jpeg?resize=570%2C350)
Saturday, 21st September 2019 This trip is a Great Railway Journeys (GRJ) tour. It is titled ‘Imperial Cities and 5 star Danube Cruise’. GRJ have a cruise ship that will travel for seven days from Budapest along the Danube to Passau. There are several options for getting to the cruise ship, these include direct flight; two days by train (first or second class) or four days by train (first or second class) travelling via either Berlin and Prague or via Bavaria. My tour is the four day tour, second class, via Berlin and Prague to Budapest. At Budapest I will leave the group on the cruise ship and return home to the UK. I then journey back later in the week to meet the group at Passau and take them back to the UK over two days, staying in Köln on the way back. Since it is an early start from St Pancras on the Sunday morning, I travel up to London on the Saturday afternoon and stay in a hotel close to St Pancras. Sunday, 22nd September 2019 I am up early on Sunday morning and meeting and greeting the tourees from 07:00 to 08:00 at the GreatRail offices, upstairs at St Pancras. This is a busy day for GreatRail with nine tours going out from St Pancras the same morning. The Eurostar train departs London St Pancras at 08:55 and arrives in Brussels at 12:05 where we are met by man and a baggage cage and our luggage […]
England
Thursday 20th June 2019 The final full day of this tour starts with a coach journey to Raby Castle. We were fortunate to have a guided tour of the castle one hour before the official public opening. This is a spectacular castle, still owned by the same family who originally constructed it, in 1367. It features a hall that you could drive a coach through. Following Raby Castle, the coach took us to the town of Barnard Castle. In the town is the Bowes Museum (Bowes was the maiden name of Elizabeth the Queen mother). I was particularly taken by the Lego model of the museum. Following the museum I took a walk along the river… …before visiting the castle. Friday was the final day of the tour. This involved a coach from the hotel at 10:00 to Durham railway station and then the train home. RailDiscoveries Tour Map: Selfie of the day: Recent Posts: Related Posts:
Wednesday 19th June 2019 Day three of this tour involves a coach journey from Lumley Castle to Hexham railway station. From Hexham we caught a train, along the line of Hadrian’s Wall, to Carlisle. There is about three hours’ free time in Carlisle. This allows time to visit the cathedral. You can also visit the castle [see the feature picture at the top of this blog], and spend time in the town centre. Following the return journey on the train, we had a guided tour of Hexham Abbey. The abbey features some stunning medieval paintings in the choir. RailDiscoveries Tour Map: Selfie of the day: Recent Posts: Related Posts:
Thursday June 18th 2019 The second day of this tour is spent at Beamish. However, following discussions with Eric, the coach driver, we took a brief detour on the way to the open air museum, to stop and view the Angel of the North. The Beamish museum is an open air museum that looks to preserve examples of every day living in the North East of England from the 1920s onwards. There are three railways, old trams, a coal mine, villages etc. I went for a walk down the mine. As I was watching them shunt an old steam engine backwards and forwards it unfortunately derailed! The preserved railway station. The village high street. The fully functioning pub. The trams take the visitors around the whole museum. The museum is currently expanding by building a new 1950s area. This involves, amongst other things, demolishing a cinema in Sunderland, brick-by-brick and rebuilding it a the museum. I was fortunate enough to blag my way into the press launch of the new community centre. It reminds me of the Oliver Bird Hall in Solihull where I went to a youth club in my teens. I particularly liked the wagon way. Video of the day: RailDiscoveries Tour Map: Selfie of the day: Recent Posts: Related Posts:
Sunday 16th – Monday 17th June 2019 This tour starts with me meeting the tourees at Durham railway station at 16:00. From here our coach takes us to our hotel – Lumley Castle. Originally a manor house, in 1389 Sir Ralf Lumley received permission from the Prince Bishop of Durham to convert it into a castle. Unfortunately Sir Ralf was executed in 1400 after a failed coup to overthrow Henry IV and Lumley Castle was subsequently confiscated by the crown, but it was returned to the Lumley family in 1421. In the early 1800s the castle came under the ownership of the Bishop of Durham after he had given his home, Durham Castle, to the newly created University of Durham. Later, Lumley Castle became a hall of residence for the university. The university sold the castle in the 1960s to fund the development of new halls of residence in the city. In 1976 it was established as a hotel with great historical character. My room, reached by a typical medieval spiral staircase – [see video of the day, below] – was the window seen top right in the above picture and featuring a four poster bed, pull cord light switches and rope ties for the curtains. Monday started with a 15 minute coach journey into Durham where we picked up Jan, our local blue badge guide. Jan and Eric, our coach driver, gave us a 30 minute coach tour around the outer part of Durham where we saw the river, […]
Friday June 7th 2019 For the penultimate day of this tour our coach took us to Keighley railway station. Keighley is one end of the Keighley & Worth Valley Railway [KWVR]. Our journey on this line took us through Oakworth station. This was used as the location of the station in the film The Railway Children. The line finishes at Oxenhope. From Oxenhope our coach took us to the previous village on the line, Haworth. Haworth is a beautiful village on a hill. No big chain shops here. Haworth is also home to the parsonage where the Bronte family lived. It is now a museum that the tourees visited. In the earlier mentioned film, The Railway Children, it was used as the setting of Doctor Forrest’s surgery. Haworth is also the site of the engine sheds for the KWVR. As part of the trip we were given a guided tour of the engine sheds where restoration work is undertaken on old steam and diesel engines. As a Microsoft Excel addict I was particularly pleased to see their works’ planning board. From Haworth we travelled on to Ingrow station to visit the Vintage Carriages Trust. Here old railway carriages are restored and preserved. The carriages are lent to film studios and have appeared in many television programmes and films. Also the little steam locomotive from The Railway Children is situated here. Saturday is the final day of this tour and involves breakfast followed by checkout from the hotel. After saying goodbye […]
Thursday 6th June 2019 Today’s trip started with a coach journey to Goathland, familiar to many as the location for the fictional village Aidensfield in the ITV series Heartbeat. Goathland also has a picturesque station on the preserved North Yorkshire Moors Railway [NYMR] which allowed an opportunity for the many rail enthusiasts on the tour to photograph and film the locomotives. From Goathland the coach took us on to Whitby, a beautiful port town. While the tourees went off on their own I had a walk around the town … … and visited the beach. However, I chose not to climb the 199 steps up to the church and Abbey ruins as I am saving that treat for when I revisit Whitby with my wife and daughters in a couple of months time. Instead I did some research to find a good place to take them to for lunch and a beer. I found a really good, glass-sided balcony with views overlooking the harbour. From Whitby the tourees and I caught a steam train to Pickering on the North Yorkshire Moors Railway and from Pickering we travelled back to Harrogate and our hotel by coach. At the hotel I took the opportunity of taking a photograph of a very charming and stylish couple on the tour. Not only were they both extremely smartly dressed in period clothing throughout the whole trip, but they had also travelled up to Harrogate in a classic old Bentley. Video of the day: RailDiscoveries Tour […]
Tuesday 4th – Wednesday 5th June 2019 The first day of this tour is a travel day for me, the Tour Manager. Following a train into London and tube from Victoria to King’s Cross I caught the 12:00 train to York and then the 14:11 train on to Harrogate. The tour is based in The Old Swan in Harrogate from where we will travel out each day. The Old Swan is a large period hotel and is renowned for being the hotel where Agatha Christie was found staying when she famously disappeared for 10 days. What interested me was the fact that she checked into the hotel using the name of her then husband’s mistress. From 16:00, for an hour, I waited at reception to meet all the tourees so that I could greet them and give out the details of the evening meal. After breakfast, on the Wednesday, we walked as a group down to Harrogate train station to make the 25 minute train journey to York. Some tourees opted not to join us in York, instead preferring to spend the day in Harrogate. At York Station we were met on the platform by our two local guides. The group duly split into three as some passengers opted not to join the walking tour and set off to explore on their own. I had distributed their return tickets in readiness so that they could travel back to Harrogate on any of the hourly trains at a time of their […]